Christian Witness, Moral Anthropology, and the Death Penalty

Abstract:
In this essay, I consider - in the context of our ongoing debates about capital punishment - the
question, "what role ought religious beliefs play in a pluralistic
democratic society that often presumes strict boundaries between
matters of private faith and political life?" I suggest, first, that we should resist the imposition of such "strict" boundaries between "matters of private faith and political life" and, second, that in the context of our public arguments about thedeathpenalty, engaged Christians should not merely to baptize the policy analyses and
preferences of abolitionist or other interest groups, but should
instead propose clearly what Pope John Paul II called the "moral truth
about the human person." I contend that moral problems - andthedeathpenalty poses, inescapably, such a problem - are anthropological problems, because moral arguments are built, for the
most part, on anthropological presuppositions. In other words, as one
scholar put it, our attempts at moral judgment tend to reflect our
foundational assumptions about what it means to be human. Accordingly,
what the public square needs from engaged Christians is a
counter-cultural argument about the dignity and destiny of the human person. Such an argument could help our fellow citizens reach the right conclusion about what to do with convicted murderers not so much by dusting the
usual arguments with God-talk as by challenging our culture to
understand who and what these condemned persons are, and why it should
make a difference.